These people are idiots. (Among other things, lost on them like warmth on a witch's tit is the association of book-burning with the sorts of people they claim to abhor.) They exemplify perfectly the poison that people pour into our body politic, in the name of some perverted idea of faith, of right and wrong. Worse (though not by much) than the anti-non-mosque at non-ground-zero crowd, they're not just expressing a short-sighted and narrow-minded opinion, they're deliberately trying to enflame. Both, though, are clearly doing us harm. And yet I'm sure they'd all say that our wars are god's work, and that they support the troops 100% (as long as they don't have to pay taxes to do it.)

In words that should be in my previous post, on irony, Sarah Palin, hater of non-mosques at non-ground-zero, has this refudiation of book burning:

I would hope that Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters will consider the ramifications of their planned book-burning event. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don't feed that fire. If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive.

Some have raised concern that it's not up to military leaders to make judgments on civilian activities, even such noxious ones as this. I think they have a point, and this article makes it well:

I've long argued that the way Americans treat Islam and Muslims definitely has an effect on the fight against terrorism abroad, but I'm uncomfortable with Petraeus drawing a direct line of responsibility between whether or not American troops live or die and whether or not a group of radicals holds a "burn the Quran day." There's something about that statement that crosses the line for me -- I just don't think that in a democracy people in uniform are the proper arbiters of what constitutes appropriate free expression, even when it's an event with fascist overtones as obvious as a public book burning. Suffice it to say that if Republican elites were committed to tamping down Islamophobic hysteria rather than exploiting it and Democratic officials were less timid about assembling a national-security narrative in which America was strengthened instead of weakened by its tolerance and religious plurality, we wouldn't be here.

Still, someone needs to call out the fundamental stupidity and destructiveness of the planned burning. And I find the last sentence, above, by far the most important, which is why I bolded it, and have said as much before. Rs are fomenting hysteria for political gain, at obvious cost to our country, and they couldn't care less. (The party leaders have been notably mum.) And Ds have failed to point out the obvious ways in which American tolerance and pluralism are part of our strength.

In my view, the general crossed a line. But he did so out of a sense of responsibility - as in his insistence on the importance of the Israel-Palestine question to the broader war. Alas, I see the American far right - in which I include the likely Republican candidates for president - crossing far worse lines of incitement out of irresponsibility and cheap politics. And then a farce like Palin - who wants more aggressive Israeli settlement in the West Bank and conflates the Cordoba complex with bin Laden - simultaneously declares her love for the troops.

And what is the price for her? It wins her votes. It flatters her vanity. It rouses the true believers. And it helps lose the war. (emphasis mine, big surprise.)

As usual, I don't know which is more depressing: that we have a party (and its universal propaganda wing of the airwaves and photons) shamelessly using hate as a political tool; or that there are so many Americans only too happy (or too stupid not) to be used this way.

Okay, I do know: it's the latter, by far. For it is on their backs that we ride ourselves to oblivion.

[Update: he's canceling it. Good for him. And he plans to meet with Imam Rauf. Hope he reads this first. It's pomegranates and hand grenades.]

[Update #2: Gates called him. Love to have heard the conversation. And the conversations before the conversation.]

C'mon Sid, burning K'oran's will make em forget we're still holding Innocent Camel Herders Prisoner in Gitmo/Killing Unarmed Afghani Civillians with Predator UAVs/Garrisoning 50,000+ Occupying troops in Iraq.And how many Billions of Muslims are offended by "I Dream of Jeanie" reruns??, I mean Major Nelson and Jeanie never got married, he defiled the Moon with his Christian filth, and she never wore the Chador... Hell, Y'all Yankees Burned down my friggin HOMETOWN not to long ago, and do I keep complainin???OK a little bit.In WW2 the 3 Stooges, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse all joined the War Effort pokin fun at Hitler and the Japs.I'd burn a Koran myself if it wasn't 9-11 and I didn't have 36 hrs of college football games to watch.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™